My non-techie friends either barely notice Liquid Glass or go "ooo this is nice!". It has annoyed me on occasion, but I barely notice it any more. Much ado about nothing.
And besides a few odd posts on x, I haven’t heard anyone techy speak positively about it.
Maybe I’m the one in a bubble, but I’m seriously considering switching from Apple as a lifelong Apple user, largely because of the UI changes (Liquid Glass et al), so I don’t think the complaints about it are overblown.
Personally I bundle it all up into “Liquid Glass et al”, but the glass effects are the least of the issues for me. I could maybe get over an ugly design; design is subjective after all. But iOS 26 is just disfunctionally bad design (imho)
This is one of many things that really bother me in iOS 26, after just having updated from iOS 18. It just looks wrong that it's fully transparent until you fully pulled it down, and then suddenly everything flies away. Very strange effect.
Another thing is the border effect on the icons and widgets. I wish there was a way to turn those off completely, but either you get the motion effect or you have permanent borders.
So many strange decisions.
Which is to say, we all have our own bubbles.
I have the vision pro, mbp m4, ip15 pro max, apple watch ultra 2, studio display (2026), 2 official keyboards, 2 magic trackpads, ipad (4th gen), 3 homepod 2, 5 homepod mini, airpod pro 3 (I keep buying new airpod pros every time they come out because the improvements are really good).
I'm fine liquid glass and I use their products like.. 20 hours a day?
We also have data to show people dislike this. Google Trends shows the largest spikes ever for "how to switch to android", "iphone revert update", "iphone fix battery", and "iphone slow", all only after the release of Liquid Glass (and particularly the increased tactics to get people to update starting in September).
Now, if I was developing software for MacOS and it broke all my UIs, I would be at least as irritated as the author.